BBC 4 has recently airing a number of programmes in their excellent ‘Timeshift’ history series which included a recent episode entitled, ‘When Coal was King’, exploring the lost world of coal mining and the lives of the people who worked in the industry.

Nationalisation

It recalled the period from nationalisation in 1947 until the early 1980s, when the National Coal Board Film Making Unit made features to be shown in cinemas each month — from technical films on excavation and health and safety, to ones about the leisure activities of miners and their families.

Billy Elliot

These include a possible early inspiration for the film ‘Billy Elliott’, with sturdy old colliers dressed in tutus dancing to the music from ‘Coppelia’ and a fascinating glimpse into brass banding in the Northumberland coalfield on its traditional Gala Day.

Beer and G troms

Interestingly, amid the shots of one conductor directing a march standing on top of two rickety beer crates, some wonderful footage of the old G trombone in action and the portentous adjudicator Mr Oliver Howarth using the telephone to request the next band to perform from the confines of an upstairs room in the local Miners Institute, is a glimpse of a number of young women playing in the bands themselves.

Unfortunately the film doesn’t reveal who they were and what bands they played for, so who were these fantastic female pioneers of musical emancipation in brass banding we wonder...4BR

Who are these pioneers

Unfortunately the film doesn’t reveal who they were and what bands they played for, so who were these fantastic female pioneers of musical emancipation in brass banding we wonder...

Watch the programme

See a repeat of the programme on the BBC i-player at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03gtg7g/Timeshift_Series_13_When_Coal_Was_King/